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coondoggie writes "Whether or not NASA launches two or three more shuttle missions, NASA's venerable hub of operations, the Kennedy Space Center will need a new mission. That's why NASA today said it was looking to morph the center's unique space rocket facilities into a new more commercial role after the shuttles stop flying. While its facilities would likely rise far above others, NASA could find some competition in any commercial launch venture."

No one rebuts your posts because doing so would dignify their existence. Much like if someone claimed that the earth was flat, I wouldn't bother citing a few thousand years of empirical evidence to prove them wrong. The fact is, you can't fix stupid, so sometimes it just makes more sense to ignore it.

actually the Saturn V is not a lawn ornament, it is housed inside a tourista building. It is (or was) a flight-qualified vehicle, and a sci-fi movie used it in their story. Situation was hostile space aliens have a few "forward air controllers" as part of plans to launch an invasion of earth but how could NASA launch some guys to the moon, "hey, we already got a launch vehicle at KSC!" So off they go and successfully put a stop to the invasion. OK so offtopic, somewhat entertaining movie. It also starred Wa

the could always reposition it as a elder engineer's retirement village. The sad fact is that NASA's mission for space was hijacked by politics. The Future in space looks like it will be more like Firefly: Mandarin speakers.

if I take some gold and put it in a huge tank of air, I could then say there is so much more air in there than the gold, that the gold is not relevant. That is obviously false. The only thing that matters is the cost effectiveness of going and getting it.

Along those lines, there is a *lot* more stuff, just in our local solar system than there is on earth itself. So drop the "ratio" argument.

Open immigration to large numbers of people able to work, with strong preferences for those with higher levels of education, while there is space and infrastructure to fit more people. Create free or low-cost public knowledge-level tests for all subjects, and create a public record of all documented skills. Campaign for reduction of imports of everything, balanced trade levels, and for self-reliance, for all countries. Create lots of stimulus for people to study constantly throughout life. Promote the

You should google "immigration gumballs" to see how increasing immigration will do nothing to solve the problems of the world. It also addresses how trying to attract even more of the "best of the best" from other countries can cause more harm than good when you consider the effect of the drain on their home country.

You are better off trying to help those developing country "help" themselves through increased international trade and providing aid for development of infrastructure in those other nations.

I'm all for it, but I have my doubts that anyone is going to invest several million to launch a Mars exploration mission with no profits whatsoever in the forseeable future.

If you or anyone else has even the rough outline of a workable plan to get to Mars for anything close to several million I expect you'd have to beat investors off with a stick, many would do it just for the publicity, without any expectation of direct ROI. The trouble is getting a man to Mars would likely cost more on the order of several Billion and that's to do it badly.

I think there's less reason for doubt than is generally believed. There's been a fair bit of interest in resource extraction. Primarily for the moon, but likewise for Mars. The present players seem fairly comfortable with the engineering aspects [ieee.org]. The main concern relates more to legal title to the resources once extracted. The wealth locked up in NEOs is unfathomable and the private sector is in a far better position to leverage it than government.

The main concern relates more to legal title to the resources once extracted. The wealth locked up in NEOs is unfathomable and the private sector is in a far better position to leverage it than government.

The Outer Space Treaty pretty much makes it clear that legal title to the resources of the rest of the solar system won't be available to any private individual or corporation.

Which means that there's no incentive whatsoever to bother developing the capability to go there and extract said resources....

Not clearly. It's actually kind of fuzzy. http://www.space.com/10621-moon-mining-legal-issues.html [space.com]
I suspect that the miner's country of origin would love it as they can tax the profit once the materials are sold on Earth. If the other nations raise a stink... we will have to wait to see.

Given parties with enough cash/clout, any treaty can be set aside. I'd bet that if a party well-heeled enough to get a mining system set up to get rare minerals from the moon to Earth on a fairly inexpensive basis (perhaps with a space elevator), the Outer Space Treaty would be shelved or amended to nothingness by at least one country.

Given parties with enough cash/clout, any treaty can be set aside. I'd bet that if a party well-heeled enough to get a mining system set up to get rare minerals from the moon to Earth on a fairly inexpensive basis (perhaps with a space elevator), the Outer Space Treaty would be shelved or amended to nothingness by at least one country.

Given that you'd have to spend a buttload of money first, convincing people to invest in an operation that can't ever make a return on investment without overturning a Treaty,

Don't like us strip mining the moon? Well come on up and do something about it beeotches!

And realistically, at this point in the game, I foresee absolutely nothing that would be exported back to Mutha Eurth except information and energy. Anything you build out there is most likely going to be local support infrastructure or outward looking.

Tell me, if we did build one, wouldn't that prove we have ALL the resources, energy and technology we need, RIGHT HERE????

Building a space elevator is more a matter of finding a material which actually works than finding energy and resources... and right now I'm not aware of one.

In any case, a space elevator would be pointless for bring material _down_ from the moon since you can just drop it into some empty part of the planet and process it there. A space elevator would be good for taking bulk cargo up, and delicate things like people and manufactured products down, but if you have a kilometer-sized asteroid or lump of moon r

No one is proposing that NASA disappear. Well, a few people are, but they're mostly ignored as the fringe.

Commercialization means that for a potential Mars mission, or Asteroid mission, or anything else, most of the lifting from the surface to LEO would be done by commercial providers where possible. Some people still think a customized NASA-specific heavy lift vehicle would be necessary, so I'll go with that. However, imagine if you could just launch all the heavy stuff on that, and then put the people u

Yes. It is prime for launching because among all spots in the continental United States, it is:
1. Close to the equator - good to achieve equatorial orbits
2. On the eastern seaboard. Orbits typically go from West to East. So from there, they can launch to the east, and be going over the ocean, so if anything goes wrong, well, it's over the ocean
Probably also because of mild weather, year-round, too.

It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.

Very interesting point! I'd never heard of that - and it took a bit of time and visualization for me to confirm that! Very scarcely documented - even in a Google search! Although, I do not believe many of the actual launches actually follow that path.

It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.

Doesn't mean as much as it seems on first sight. If the flight fails badly, the equipment will fall within a few hundred miles of the launch site. Otherwise, it will reach orbit and then the earth is rotating away from the orbit plane. You don't need a full great circle to abort a mission.

The key point here is that orbital velocity is the main factor. In order to be reasonably efficient, a rocket must reach orbital velocity as soon as possible. If a rocket isn't in orbit within about 500~1000 miles from the

NASA is no more geared to commercial spaceflight than Red Bull's Formula 1 team is geared to making SUVs. NASA is, however, geared towards research and design, non-terrestrial physical sciences, deep space communications, etc.

Specialists are capable of going further in a specific field than any generalist. It would be suicide for them to try and compete with fly-by-night rocket groups that can launch satellites from disused oil rigs. It is seriously doubtful they could seriously battle for the LEO passenger market, or even with the Russians on the millionaires-in-space front. Frankly, I don't think they should.

NASA should not go commercial. They should invest more on ion drive research (how else will we get TIE fighters?), more on reliable landers (reusable spacecraft and/or colonies won't be possible until we improve the reliability aspect), more on deep space missions (commercial vendors won't bother mining asteroids until we find asteroids that we can profitably reach and mine - nickle isn't nearly valuable enough), more on alternative launch technologies (turbine-assisted ramjets, ski-jump ramps, cannon-assisted ramjets - all areas NASA is working on or have done), more on computational fluid dynamics (it's bad enough designing aircraft for atmospheres you can actually test in).

These are areas where the commercial value is next to zero until AFTER the results are in. The private sector won't invest in this stuff. Or if it does, not nearly enough. But the private sector can do bugger all until those results are indeed in.

NASA should be devolved from the Government, much in the same way the BBC is devolved from the British Government (via charter and as a source of funding but not under the control of nor under the sole funding of), but it should not be privatised or seek to use commerce to make the gap between what it needs and what scraps the politicians will give it after funding military escapades.

I agree with everything you wrote, and I must add that Florida is absolutely not the best place for a commercial launch site.

The most interesting orbit for commercial launches is the geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The highest cost, by far, in a launch for GEO is inclination control. The added fuel a satellite needs to compensate for inclination in a launch from Florida costs about as much as a complete launch from an equatorial position. Launching from Florida doubles the cost, it's as simple as tha

NASA has no money, because Congress doesn't fund them for crap. What they would do if they had money is immaterial. They can't invest in blue sky (or starry sky) research when they are barely keeping up with existing research programs--and indeed many valuable programs have been cut in the past few years because of it.

The move to put NASA in a role supporting commercial spaceflight is entirely a cost- and/or face-saving measure by politicians. Nobody at NASA needs to hear it. Talk t

If you RTFA, it sounds like how cash-strapped British Lords open up parts of their country estates to provide a little cash-flow to finance maintenance and repairs. Or like some kind of NASA garage sale. At any rate, it doesn't sound like NASA is planning on launching anything there real soon.

So if you want to get yourself into space, learn Russian. Ha! It's like the Tortoise and the Hare Space Race . . . congratulations, Russia, in the long run, you have won.

It's a shame that NASA has to play into commercialism to stay afloat. Back in the 60's when we were racing to the moon NASA got all the money they needed, but once that was won the well dried up. Like Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13 answering a question about why funding should continue after having already beaten the Russians:
Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.

NASA needs a new mission alright, but it needs to include more trips into space and not selling toy shuttles and rides on roller coasters.

The problem with the analogy for the Moon and Spanish exploration in the New World is simple.

There was money to be had, hand over fist in the New World, going back and forth to the Moon was a money sink. Even if Apollo 19-20 had been funded and Saturn V production had continued, the Oil Crisis of 1973 would have killed the funding.

NASA needs to get out of manned spaceflight and back to what it was founded for, developing technologies for civilian aviation and aerospace applications.

The difference between Columbus vs the Apollo crews is that Columbus brought back gold/ Silver/ spices with him.

The spices not so much but there should be decent quantities of raw minerals out there that we need on a regular basis. The problem becomes how much does it cost to setup mining out there and return. (rememebr the moon has lower gravity so you can send more back easier)

Ehh not that good of an analogy.
Now, if North America was nothing more than a useless ball of dusty iron, and Columbus went there just solely as a dick-waving act toward a person/country he openly hated a whole lot rather than a search for wealth, then maybe your analogy would stand.

You're misinterpreting what commercial space transport means. It doesn't mean that NASA tries to sell what it has to any millionaire looking for a joy ride.

What it means is that rather than designing and using one-off vehicles for its own uses, NASA will instead try to purchase launches from commercial companies where possible. It already does this in fact -- all unmanned NASA missions, as well as all DOD missions, are launched on commercially acquired Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles, mostly purchased from ULA (i.e. Lockheed/Boeing). Now it is just moving a step further and providing a framework to do the same thing for manned spacecraft. In addition to reducing the abuses inherent to cost-plus contracts, it also opens up some reduced savings by letting other customers subsidize the development costs. For other customers, don't let the 'space tourism' thing get you down. While there may be some of that, the most likely 'other customers' would be other countries looking to do their own research without being as dependent on the whims of NASA.

NASA will continue to be on the forefront of exploration for the near future, funding missions and designing the hardware to do what hasn't been done before. What the commercialization proposals do is try and make the first step (getting to LEO) a little cheaper. Going with your Columbus analogy, he didn't have to design and build the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria himself, he bought them with the funds provided by the crown, and we can hope this provides NASA with the same opportunity.

Nice how that shows everything coming together at 1-to-1 in 1996 with the actual dollars vs CPI adjusted dollars. And then crosses over, with each subsequent year dollars buying less. Thanks for the assfucking Wallstreet, would you like another bailout?

Imagine if Christopher Columbus came back from the New World, and no one returned in his footsteps.

It's more like when Captain Thomas Bladen Capel came back from Rockall [wikipedia.org] in 1810, and no one returned until 1896. Somebody made another visit in 1955, and put up a plaque. There was another visit in 1985. Someone is planning a visit in 2011 as a promotion for a charity.

Plenty of S-Prize type competitions happening now. They may have some creative and efficient approaches to the space industry. Then they may not beat NASA. I fear the 2% astronaut fatality rate will sour private space travel when the first disaster happens.

Time to stencil "Abandon In Place" on Pad 39A, as has been done with older unused pads at Kennedy. Maybe put in a Son et lumière (show)" [wikipedia.org], like the Pyramids. Future generations will come to look at the ruins.

Funny. Yes, Obama did some stupid things like killing eLORAN research and destroying Loran-C infra that could be used for eLoran. GPS needs backup. Among other things.But I have to agree with Obama's Space/NASA strategy.Space should be explored for profit and scientific advancement that makes financial sense.The USA isn't great because it can waste billions of dollars in its space program. You need to be careful how you spend your dollars, or the USA will cease to be great real soon.If you analyze the recen

No one is stopping funding space exploration. Commercialization in this sense means purchasing launch vehicles for people from commercial providers, just as we do for unmanned vehicles.

This should in theory free up *MORE* money to allow real exploration, technology development, and all the things NASA is good at. The commercialization policies proposed by the administration included an overall increase in the NASA budget.

It's absolutely astounding to me (as someone who works at KSC) the level of understanding with the comments here regarding commercial spaceflight. Nyeerrmm got it right - some of you, oh boy, stick to topics you know...
Not only is there a push for commercial spaceflight, but there are plans to build a heavy lift vehicle (which lately there is talk of utilizing the commercial sector to do.) In addition to this, research on in-space fueling depots and "shipyards" are in the works. Like with anything in

Prime launching areas are in the equator. So much more economical that other countries developed Sea Launch. Regardless of their economic troubles, the savings in rocket fuel is very big.Cheap launching areas are in South America. With French Guyana 100% operational, and launch areas in Brazil in small scale usage.Could be in Africa as well, but not enough political stability.Yes, the cape is probably good enough. But if the only object was launch cost, then all launch would be moved much further south.The